Police: Delivery van driver gets stuck on impassable road after following navigation system

Apr. 11, 2013

Written by

Free Press Staff

Police say the latter happened to a Claremont, N.H., man this week when he followed the satellite navigation service in his delivery van to roughly the Middle of Nowhere, Vt., where the vehicle got stuck, and the driver needed to be rescued.

Warren Hewey, 20, was on his way to a delivery in Groton just before 4 p.m. Wednesday, following his GPS’ instructions farther and farther into the mountains east of U.S. 2 in Marshfield. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that’s when trouble struck, police said a day after the incident.

The van got stuck.

Hewey “had no idea where he was,” Vermont State Police Sgt. Roger Farmer said in a statement Thursday night.

He had to hike half a mile — uphill — to find a cellphone signal and call police.

The authorities traced the mobile phone’s coordinates to the area of 2167 Jerusalem Road in Marshfield — a stretch of Vermont road police described as unmaintained in the winter and impassable.

The ordeal was short-lived. State police arrived in the vicinity, hiked up the road and found Hewey. Troopers called in a wrecker, too, and retrieved the trapped van.

There was no word on what Hewey was on his way to deliver, or whether he continued on to his final destination — and if he did, whether he ignored the GPS the rest of the way.